


Sibling Rivalry

by CactusJam



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s), Recreational Drug Use, Swearing, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-03 09:50:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14566419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CactusJam/pseuds/CactusJam
Summary: Apollo is an irresponsible child and an even more irresponsible camp director. Artemis is disapproving. The kids are all grown up and watching the new generation suffer under their guidance.





	1. Chapter One

This story, like so many of the greats, starts with a God, an oracle, and a cave.

It’s spring, officially. The birds are chirping, the evenings are light and the entire state of New York has their fingers crossed they’ve seen the last of the snow. It is, then, a perfect night for emotionally scarring the newest son of Athena.

“Rachel?” 

“Solly.”

“You know you have the powers of Apollo as the Delphic oracle, right?”

“Yes Solly.”

“Then why do you have a chest full of magic eight balls?” 

That’s unfair. She only has three magic eight balls. The chest contains every fortune telling device she can find, from cootie catchers to tarot cards. It’s become something of a running joke to hunt down obscure ones and gift them to her. Tell you what though, there’s nothing so perturbing as the son of the God of the Underworld giving you a Ouija board for your twenty-first birthday, apart from maybe drunk-dialling your ex with it. Ghosts cannot take a joke if their lives depend on it.

“Your cabin really didn’t tell you anything about this?” Rachel asks. It’s their way of voicing disapproval, she thinks. 

“Only that we take turns chaperoning when our uncle comes round.”

“Jesus, I’m the freaking Oracle at Delphi, I do not need a chaperone. Just, take notes if either of us starts talking in rhymes.” The purpose of this is two-fold. The first of these is that Apollo is looking to release a book of his limericks.

Solly buries himself in the pile of paintings at the back of the cave, to save from irritating her further. Rachel’s scary.

“These are really good,” he says. “Have you thought about selling them?”  
“I have to wait for them to age first, in case they’re prophetic. Don’t need the whole world asking how I knew the Tate Modern was going to be stampeded by cows.”

“To graze, perchance to moo, the most darling art, of that they knew-”

“Apollo-” Solly starts, head-bowed. He might not be the scariest of the Gods, or even of the people in the room, but he’s still a God.

“You’re new,” Apollo says.

“Apparently Sarah refused to come back. Said she can’t condone our bad choices.” The two of them roll their eyes. Solly quakes in his boots.

“You got the stuff?” Apollo asks. Soon enough a bowl is packed and lit, Rick and Morty is playing in the background, and the two of them are shaking eight-balls furiously. It’s a race, you see, who can trigger a prophesy first.

Athena disapproves. Of course she does. Prophecies are inherently dangerous things and messing with them works about as well as Zeus hiding his infidelity from Hera does. Unfortunately, being the literal God of prophecy, Apollo’s opinion trumped hers so she has to resign herself to pursing her lips and dispatching her children to keep an eye on them. Uh, that is, recording their prophecies.

“Would you like a puff?” Apollo asks, ever the samaritan, trying to keep his nieces and nephews comfortable.

“I’m twelve, Lord Apollo.”

“And that’s-?”

“Too young, Lord Apollo. Didn’t they teach you this when you became Camp Director?”

“I’ll have you know I’m the best director this camp has ever had. I haven’t threatened to vaporise anyone even once.”

“Give it time,” Rachel snorts. “He’s only had two years.”

“Shhh you. I remember when my oracles had some respect-”

“Please. I studied art, remember, I know for a fact your oracle used to get high in that cave.”

“See what I have to deal with?” Apollo asks. Solly sticks his hands up. There’s a saying in the Athena cabin, never judge a dispute between Gods, the loser will smite you. It might not be catchy but it’s undeniably wise.

“You know,” Rachel starts, but she’s caught on freeze-frame in the middle. The boys turn to look at her. Solly would pray for a prophecy, for a reprieve, but that would involve praying to the man sitting to the left of him, currently bitching and curing.

“Fuck’s sake. You’d think, since I gave her the damned powers, I’d be able to prophesise better than her but noooo. What is it Rachel? Tell us what we need to hear.”

“Put on your armour,  
There’s family drama,  
Never before seen-  
One pissed off queen.”

“That’s a prophecy?” Solly aks. “It’s not like one I’ve ever seen before.”

“It wouldn’t be. It’s non-natural, and Rach’s prophecies got edgy after she learned to swear. You get it all written down?” Solly nods. “Great stuff. I need you to go fetch me a drachma then Malcolm.”

“It’s Solomon.”

“Whatever. Drachma me.”

“Why?”

“It’s not obvious? I’m calling my sister.” He gets a water bottle out from the mini fridge Rachel keeps in there. For reasons no-one can quite understand hooking up electricity was easy but running water is an eternal nightmare.

“Doesn’t Isis carry the Gods’ messages for free?” Solly asks.

“I guess,” Apollo says. “If you want her chasing you up for a favour you apparently owe her two centuries later. It’s easier to pay up front. Anyway, you should head back to your cabin, tell them you did your due diligence. Rachel will walk you.”  
“I really should-” Solly begins, before he catches a distinct I will smite you gleam in Apollo’s eyes. He quickly decides recovering the prophecy definitely counts as him fulfilling his chores for the night.

“You’re kicking me out?” Rachel asks. After the drama with the last one she’s ninety-nine percent sure he’s not going to smite her. “This is literally my bedroom.”

“Please Rach, you know how Arty gets-”

He’s lying. The worst thing is, Rachel knows it, and he knows Rachel knows it. He thinks the two of them, his best girls, talk when he’s not around. Anything for additional blackmail. Arty would call him narcissistic, probably, but he invented that word, and she only ever pulls that card when she’s plotting something evil. That is, always.

The kids disappear, as he starts spraying seriously.

“Oh Isis, Goddess of rainbows who owes me a serious favour after I helped design that new series of sun catchers for you, please bug my sister till she responds.”

You are now being connected.

Bleep. Bleep. Bleep. Bleep.

“Arty!”

“Apollo.”

“Long time, no speak.”

“What do you want this time?”

“Can’t a brother call his sister because he misses her and they haven’t spoken in-”

“No. What do you want Apollo?”

“You have to come to camp.”

“Absolutely not.”

“It’s good.”

“Brother, no.”

“Sister, yes. Listen to me, it’s code Paris good.”

“My hunters-”

“Leave ‘em. T-dawg can handle it.”

“Don’t call my lieutenant T-dawg.”

“She likes it. She’s got this. You’ll only be gone like a week, or eight.”

“Code Paris, you say?” Artemis asks. Suspicion always drops from her voice when she talks to her brother, but today it’s especially dense. “You haven’t used that in centuries.” Not since the QE1 situation, which went pretty well by her point of view and horribly for everyone else’s.

“Oh yeah. This is Thetis’ wedding big.”

“Fine.”

“I’ll pick you up at dawn,” Apollo says, waving his hand through the connection before she can change her mind.

“Of course you’ll pick me up at dawn,” she mutters. “You drive the damned sun, when else are you going to pick me up?”

Grumbling she turns back to explain to her hunters that she’s going to be away for a week, or eight -a phrase that sends shivers down everyone’s spines after the Atlas Incident - on family business. She hopes, as she always does, they’ll think there’s a mythic monster or a great war. She doesn't get away with it. Not after Phoebe catches her smuggling in half a ton of Walmart’s finest popcorn into camp.

This is going to be fun.


	2. Chapter Two

Imagine this. You’re thirteen. You’ve just been chased out of History class by that your teacher claimed to be wolves and you’re suspicious are literal hellspawn, and you’ve been trapped in a car with your worst enemy and step sibling who is not your twin, no matter how much you share a birthday and a bone structure, thank you very much.

Worse than all that you are greeted by the only siblings in the history of creation less functional than you are.

But we should jump back a second.

“This popcorn’s great sis.”

“Don’t call me sis.”

“This popcorn’s great Lady Artemis, Goddess of the hunt.”

“My hunters saw me carrying it. They’re not happy. I blamed you.”

“Of course you did. You blame me for everything.”

“I do not.”

“Do too.”

“Do not.”

“Second Titan War, I guess it’s because my brother’s been lying with nymphs again.”

“That was one time.”

“Apollo didn’t clean his cave properly, now he’s started the Trojan war.”

“Your fault.”

“Oh no, the Oracle gave a prophecy. How terrible. How could I? I have unleashed more horrors than Pandora on this world.”  
If either one of were paying attention they would notice the complete cease of activity around the camp. Any demigod can tell you bickering Gods are infinitely more dangerous than angry ones, and more likely to plow down unsuspecting mortals in their wake. It doesn’t help that the two of them are quite clearly sitting on top of the Big House, flicking kernels at the kids who don’t run fast enough in training. If they agree on one thing, it’s the importance of a good foot race. Away from the Police or towards prey, it doesn’t matter.

“This is why Mother likes me better.”

“Arty, Mother likes you better because you’ve been sucking up to her since the day we were born.”

“Untrue.”

“Nerd.”

“Oh yeah? Would a nerd tell Zeus you’ve been letting your kids drive the sun chariot?”

“That sounds exactly like something a nerd would do Nerdimis. It’s not a problem, they’#re old enough for permits.”

“For cars, maybe, not the sun.”

It’s unfortunate, really, for the newest demigods, involved in their own less than playful banter about whose parent may or may not have cheated on who else’s, that they have garnered this kind of attention. It’s not the gaze of the Gods that’s the issue, it’s that every single member of Camp Half-Blood is watching, staring, to make sure the twin Gods of the Sun and the Moon don’t blow up a celestial body when their estate car pulls in.

There’s a satyr, in a top hat and tails, and a scurrying of feet to get the back door open, before a flurry of flailing limbs and angry words and, through it all, a very distinct shout.

“There is mud. On my shoes. Do you know how much these cost? What is this terrible place?” The boy one, unlike Apollo in every possible sense other than the possession of two eyes and four limbs, enunciates.

“Oh shut up Eddy,” the girl one, Callie, more like Artemis than either of them would be happy to admit, says.

“Remind you of anyone?” Apollo asks, grabbing another handful of popcorn and nudging his sister.

“She’s obvious. The boy though, he gives me the shivers-”

“All boys give you the shivers Arty.”

“You two,” comes the voice of disapproval, staring at the less functional and more powerful of the two pairs of twins. “Artemis, I expected better of you. And Apollo, your job as director of this camp requires greeting all new children-”

“How did you get on the roof?” Artemis asks. In her role as divine Goddess of tracking - animals, not numbers, that Hermes’ business - she is fairly convinced that horses can’t climb walls.

“I don’t care which one of you it is, but one of you has to go explain things to the campers, you know how scared they are when they arrive-”

His point would be better served if said campers were not currently pulling each others’ hair and slinging abuse, more or less unconscious of their surroundings and somehow increasing audience. Eventually they resurface, Callie bearing a black eye, Ed with his hair escaping its gelled prison and sticking aggressively in every direction.

“Hello children, I am the Goddess Artemis.”

The two turn to her, wearing expressions they will both deny matching until their dying days,

“No you’re not,” they say, in sync, and resume their old argument with enough spirit they don’t notice the flames exploding from Art’s eye sockets. They’re saved only by the irritating persistence of one younger brother.

“What the Hades was that Arty?”

“I was welcoming the children.”

“And that’s how you do it? Jeez, sis, you recruit hunters all the time, what do you tell them?”

“I am the Goddess Artemis. My girls are braver than these cowards.” Honestly, she expects a rise out of the children from this, but she gets nothing. They’ve devolved into a shouting match of Greek proportions.

“At least my mother’s not an alcoholic who got so drunk he thought some strange dude was Dad.”

“No, your mother just let your father slip and impregnate her.”

“Children, the lot of you,” Chiron mutters, before grabbing each by an ear and dragging them to see the orientation video. It’s a new initiative, to justify the expense in making the damn thing, after that one five year period where none of the kids saw it. What can he say? There was a war on.

He sits them in opposite corners and hopes some God can take the time to make sure they don’t blow up the cinema in the next forty-five minutes. Failing that, he sends for one of Athena’s kids to chaperone. They’ll all volunteer if it means getting out of checking on Apollo and Rachel’s little meetings.

“You need to do some directing,” he tells Apollo. He is still not totally sure why Zeus insists on posting Gods to the camp. If it’s to spy on the children - he can’t even argue the fear of revolution is paranoia - it’s not going to work. He’s never met another immortal who can keep their names straight. Even Chiron has found himself calling Malcolm Dennis a couple of times.

“How so?” Apollo says.

“The kids.”

“The girl is obvious.”

“I agree,” Chiron says, carefully. He knows as well as Apollo does that the girl is not the problem, the boy is. Honestly, how him and Artemis think they’ve hidden this silly code of theirs for two millennia is a miracle. “The boy-”

“The boy is the reason there’s popcorn,” Apollo snickers. Chiron sighs.

“I’m going to call Jason.”

“Tell him we need more popcorn!”


	3. Chapter Three

It goes like this. The orientation video is forty-one minutes and thirty-seven seconds long, without ads. When you throw in Hephaestus TV’s latest offerings in out of the box PI services and Aphrodites’ new speed dating app, it rounds up to an even hour. In a surprising fit of quality camp directoring, Apollo commissioned this new one to be made. It’s by one of his kids, who took words a touch too literally and when to film school because he was shooting a camera. He did it for free, for exposure, a form of payment he now campaigns against, but it was his dad. His dad asked him for a favour and he really does care about the cause.

 

He handed it in to school, in the end, as a parody of the traditional documentary. He got a B for it, his professor citing that maybe the ten minute section on PTSD and how to treat kids who had been through a war was a little dark for a comedy piece.

But that’s not the point.

The point is that the children are sat - and brought popcorn - by their satyr, who seems to have some sort of crossed wires on what his job actually his, since it technically finishes the minute the sprats are safely deposited into Chiron’s wholesome clutches.

They sit, and they watch, and little by little Callie gets excited about this whole new world in front of her and a knot of something forms in the bottom of Ed’s stomach. It’s the list of Gods, he thinks, and the list of associated traits he might expect to see. He had to try fencing, and archery, at school, and he was never much good at either of them. Still the pegasus look like fun.

A lot can change in an hour, with advertisements, or forty-one minutes and thirty-seven seconds without. There have been times where that long as changed the world unshakably, and Chiron’s been there for quite a few of them. This just isn’t one of those times.

He spends most of this time pacing and hitting the call button, with the occasional interlude to curse Annabeth and her incredibly well-thought out plans. On her commutes to and from Olympus she has developed a prototype to let demigods use a mobile phone without attracting monsters. It involves something to do with alternating satellites in celestial bronze and imperial gold and, to be honest, Chiron doesn’t particularly care. He’s already made enough she got the damned things working in camp. He would just go ahead and ignore it if he could, but the girl has bribed Isis to not pick up his messages to anyone with a phone. At least it’s not a long list.

Brrrriiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnggggggg.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggg.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggggg.

“Wassup Dude?” Chriron shudders at this. Three thousand years of teaching and he has been reduced to what one surfer might say to another under the pier at a low-cost holiday destination.

“Jason, there’s been an incident-”

“Thalia?” He asks, all chill dropped from his voice, from surfer-dude to hardened war general in less than a heartbeat. “Pipes?”

“Everyone’s fine. We have some new recruits and, well, it’s somewhat sensitive, I would rather talk about it in person.”

“Can it wait?” Jason asks. Chiron’s not used to this either, this thing that is not technically disrespect but is definitely not a desire to please. “I’m in-” Here his voice lowers as he mumbles something, presumably to one of those strange directional computers. “I’m in fucking Ohio, on my way up to Michigan because Hermes just had to go see the Red Wings-”

“This is very sensitive-” Something in Chiron’s voice must catch here because it stops Jason, mid-tirade about the objective terribleness of the midwest and a larger, more overarching, issue with the shape of America and why it has to be so goddamned big.

“Travis and Connor putting hair dye in the Aphrodite kids’ shampoo sensitive, or Percy being named son of Poseidon sensitive?”

“Travis and Connor did what?”

“Oh, shit. We weren’t supposed to tell you. It was nothing, a long time ago really. All is forgiven and forgotten-” Apart from at Christmas, where the Stoll boys still receive a number of vaguely threatening letters about the dangers of adolescent baldness.

“It is closer to the latter,” Chiron says stiffly, resolving to get to the bottom of this other issue post-haste. It’s a good thing he was in a wheelchair all that year when they recruited Percy, the blue took forever to come out of his tail.

“Oh. Shit.”

“Quite.”

“I’ll turn the car around now, drive straight through and be with you by the morning.”

“Thank you Jason. Since this is such a delicate matter-”

“Don’t tell anyone, yeah? No worries. See you in a few.” Well, at least he didn’t get slaughtered by any monsters while he was on call, so Annabeth will be happy.

That’s how the hour goes, in its entirety, so Chiron finds himself putting the phone down and deciding not to make the Godly twins actually perform their duties and he settles the kids in himself. He explains, though this really should have been in the video, that their godly parents have seventy-two hours to claim them and when they do they’ll be moved to their cabins permanently. Until then they get to stay in the relative luxury of the Big House.

They find it hard to sleep, the enormity of what’s coming laying heavy on their shoulders, as well as the strangeness of this place they find themselves in. The two of them lie in bed, just a short wall separating them, as they hear the faint tinkle of ceramic smashing into a million pieces. Ed fancies it as fairies.

It’s five in the morning when Jason rocks up, long past when Callie gave up on sleep and knocked on Ed’s door and he made her tea, the two of them sitting together in silence, knowing this truce of being a familiar face in a strange land will end at dawn. The two of them might be asleep, in a pile, on Ed’s floor, which Chiron would reprimand them about if they weren’t siblings, but the other twins aren’t.

Gods don’t have a bedtime, and directors have all the keys to camp, so the two of them have stolen every plate from the kitchen and are clay-pigeon shooting deep into the night, the latest in a series of terrible attempts to answer the archery question.

“I believe that makes it three hundred and forty-four to you three hundred and forty-three, brother,” Arty says smugly, as her arrow pierces the last of the plates and she sends sparks flying around it, as dramatic as a crack in the moon itself.

“Because you tripped me, and you have an advantage at night,” Apollo moans. Truthfully, he thinks maybe the first glimpses of the rising sun were in his eyes. He needs to tell his kids to stop being so keen, it’s only spring, after all.

“There is no cheating Li’l sis, only using all of your tools to your advantage,” Artemis says, her voice a high-pitched imitation of Apollo’s own. Odd since he speaks lower than she does.

“You can’t take something I said out of context a thousand years ago and use it against me Art.”

“I can and I-” Whatever the Lady Artemis, Goddess of the hunt, was going to say next is unfortunately a mystery lost to the ages, since that is the very moment where Jason’s headlights pull in front of the Big House.

His car is beaten up, hovering somewhere in the awkward region of a station wagon and a pick-up. He would have preferred a Camrie of course, or a soft-top, or anything else at all, really, but he spends most of his life shuttling eleven year olds from coast to coast so comfort and reasonable fuel economy are what he’s stuck with. At least the colour’s good. When they were looking Percy made an impassioned speech for one in bright purple with stars adorning the back bumper. Khaki green is superior.

“Are you kidding me?” Artemis screeches. Apollo flinches. Jason flinches. In her cave on the other side of the world, in her sleep, Leto flinches. She’d hoped her children would always get along, be an ally for each other when backstabbing was all the rage.

“What?” Apollo asks, straight-faced. His sister has such a low opinion of his intellect that feigning idiocy has worked for him before.

“You know what. Leave your hunters behind, you said. Don’t bring Thalia, you said. There’s no reason she would want to be here when you called in her brother to come help out with the camp.”

“Is that all? Fine. Call Thalia. We’ll have a party. We can all get popcorn and watch together if that’s what it takes for you to stop screeching at me woman.”

In his bed Chiron groans. So much for a delicate matter of the upmost secrecy. So much for protecting these kids from the worst of the backlash as they settle into this new world. Why bother with that when you can have a party, and all your most trigger happy demigods are invited?


	4. Chapter Four

For people who have actually seen, and in the case of one Leo Valdez, controlled, wildfire, for news to spread like wildfire something truly extraordinary has to happen. Alternatively, you need a bunch of former heroes with little direction in life and no intention of finding it.

It goes like this.

“You brought him,” Artemis screeches. Apollo, of course, responds in both a soothing and an escalating manner ending in a situation where Chiron is the only real loser. And the kids of course. Oops.

In the car, however, a far more important and quietly whispered conversation is going on from the passenger side footwell.

“I thought we were invited dude,” the footwell hisses, the earth shaking with his fury.

“Don’t dude me, you heard that phone call too. I thought we were invited. Not my fault Artemis is crazypants.” You would think that between them, arguably the two greatest demigods of their generation but by no means the wisest - if it weren’t for the brothers Stoll they may be in contention for the bottom spots, between these two, they might have learned not to call any deity crazypants. Especially not one who already despises their presence. So they miss the rest of Art and Apollo’s conversation and jump directly to the fun bit.

“I heard that,” comes Art’s voice. It is cast in iron and hellfire and the deaths of a thousand jackalopes who were not always jackalopes. It is, in fact, a voice most commonly reserved for her twin brother. As it is, both wake up the next morning, at a wholly reasonable eleven thirty, to find chipmunks have chewed up most of their clothes.

“Shit.” With impressive simultaneity the two are out of the car, with their heads bowed and one new dropped mumbling something or other about her ladyship and the radiance of the moon. Just your usual Thursday night for an adult demigod.

“What are you doing here?”

“Chiron invited me,” Jason says, full well aware he’s being a bad friend and dropping Percy in it. It might be bros before hoes but it sure ain’t bros before incineration.

“And you?”

“I needed to make sure this one didn’t kill himself on the drive over,” Percy smirks. He knows Artemis likes him, for a boy, and Apollo owes him a helluva favour so there's really no bad ending to this. He might get singed, sure, but he needs a haircut anyway.

“Adequate. Jason,” Artemis says. Jason shudders in a way he’s not sure he ever has done, under the intense matronliness of the gaze. “You have not phoned your sister in weeks. She worries.”

“I’ve been busy-”

“That is not a good enough reason to worry my lieutenant, my hunters need her at her best so by proxy you but all of them in danger. You do not want to be the one who puts my hunters in danger.”

“Understood. I’ll be better Ma’am,” Jason promises. Percy snickers, trying, and failing, to hide it in a cough.

“I will contact her. Apollo will pick her up at dawn-”

“Of course I will. I drive the sun, Art, when else am I going to pick people up?” He interrupts.

“You say it.”

“Yeah but it’s my car Nerdimis, I can say whatever I want about it. You have to be nice to me or I’ll pick her up on a tandem bike.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“I would.”

What follows could be kindly described as a tickle fight between Gods and more accurately described as the kind of catastrophic event that would cause centuries of reparations to an assortment of wood nymphs - and an angry Chiron, who has to spend his morning replacing smashed windows - if they weren’t all scared of Artemis. The boys take the distraction to scurry up the hill to Rachel’s cave.

“Hey Rach-”

“It’s five in the fucking morning.”

“But we’re baaaaack,” Percy drawls, drunk off the pure adrenaline of going one more day without being smited. “And not dead yet.”

“Not even maimed,” Jason adds, straight-faced.

“Well thank fuck for that.”

“How’s being the oracle going?” Jason asks.

“Good. Athena cabin says I have to stop getting high with Apollo though, too many rogue prophecies for them to be keeping track of. But I guess you know that.”

“What?” Percy says, cramming his mouth full of the Goldfish crackers Rachel keeps specifically for his visits. She has Sunny D too, which Apollo thinks is hilarious and Jason finds too sugary and/or childish to be dealing with. There’s a reason Percy’s her favourite.

“The prophecy? You know, the big one recently? It’s why Artemis is around camp?” The boys sigh so heavily the ground sinks around their feet. “Shit. No, guys, not like, a Big prophecy. Just a little one. Something about one of the Goddesses getting mad or dethroned or something. Shit, that Athena kid wrote it down somewhere for me, it must be in here-” She starts searching through the million and one pieces of paper she has shoved into a pile in the hope of showing her life is a little bit together. It’s not, of course, but the conversations she has with her Dad when she has to try and explain why she’s a hippy living in a cave with no job are bad enough, she can’t have these guys worrying about her too.

She does not find the piece of paper. This is because the particular piece of paper she’s looking for does not exist. There are exactly too copies in the world, one in Chiron’s pile of things that are deeply worrying, and one in Athena cabin’s informally named blackmail board. There was a third, theoretically for her and Apollo, the experts on all things prophecy to analyse, but if she were to think really closely she might remember burning it when they ran out of papers that night.

“Chiron just said it was about some new campers, and it was sensitive,” Jason says, not to be helpful so much as to cut off her searching before he’s drowned in papers. Percy is snoring slightly on the couch.

“Ah, a coincidence then,” Rachel says sardonically. The average demigod might believe in coincidence as a function of the machinations of the Gods. The average oracle knows all things are connected via bullshit, normally too complicated to name, but in this case really obvious to anyone who’s not painfully oblivious in the manner of one Percy Jackson.

“I figured it was probably some Greek/Roman siblings or a kid of Jupiter or something. Artemis is calling Thalia.”

“It’s probably that then.” Rachel agrees easily, and untruthfully. The Athena kids might not believe it but there are some important rules to being the oracle, and not giving the demigods too many hints about the prophecies is like numbers one through nineteen. “Wanna smoke?”

Jason says yes, so they light up and wake Percy up and the three of them giggle and catch up and pass it around until their alarm goes off, to warn them they’ve got twenty minutes before the campers wake up so they can stumble back to their cabins without being a bad influence on the children. The benefit of being the only one in your cabin is that curfew becomes slightly irrelevant. The downside, of course, is that it’s profoundly depressing, but there you go, win some, lose some.

They awake, not so very many hours later, to their aforementioned chipmunk-chewed clothes, and a stern look from Chiron, informing them they have to come to the Big House right this second with no wriggle room to say hello to people or pegasi.

This proves near fatal to Jason, who is tackled in a tremendous ru7nning hug that almost knocks him down two flights of stairs.

“Little brother, you asshole, return my damned phone calls.” Percy sniggers, as he does at every Goddamned mention of the word ‘damn’. Jason sighs at this, more than the chafing affection of his sister. He hopes, as he has done every day he and Percy have spent driving around together, picking up stray children of Gods before they get attacked by monsters, that Percy will one day grow out of it. It’s been two years and no luck.

“I’m older than you now sis.”

“That’s not the point and you know it.”

“I’m glad to see you,” Jason says, and he means it. He spends enough time with Nico to know that theoretical immortality doesn’t save everyone.

“You too, li’l bro.”

“Older tha-” Chiron holds a hand up to stop him. The benefits of being a teacher rather than a parent, you get a little respect.

“The,” Chirson sighs. “The three of you have been invited here to see today’s proceedings. We had hoped you could help some new recruits make the transition a little more smoothly.”

“You say that like we can’t,” Thalia says. She says this with the level of grumpiness you would expect from anyone who was forced to wake up at the crack of dawn and face their worst fear with someone trying to pump you for information about your best friend, their sister.

“The situation is a little more complicated than that now.”

“Monsters?” Percy yawns, hand absentmindedly reaching for Riptide in his pajama pants.

“Worse,” Chiron says. “Gods.”

They look out the window, over to the training ground, where they expect to see the kids warming up for their morning lessons. The kids are not warming up, the Gods are.


End file.
